microsoft art collection
 Online Exhibition/s

New and Recent Acquisitions



  to the Gallery  .....


In honor of the inauguration and opening of the first Microsoft campus in Mountain View, California we have selected a group of works as an exhibition representing some of the areas collected and ideas expressed through Microsoft's expansive collection of contemporary art. The installation of some 83 artists included in this exhibition is placed throughout the public areas of the five new buildings that comprise the Silicon Valley campus. Included in this varied group are artists from across the U.S. as well as Canada, Great Britain and Japan. In fact some of the works shown have just recently entered the collection and are being presented in Mountain View for the first time; these include works by John Baldessari, Vera Lutter, Joan Mitchell, Julian Opie, Robert ParkeHarrison and Hills Snyder . All the works in this exhibition have been chosen because they underscore the diverse character and innovative direction of the Microsoft collection.

Within a broad range of contemporary art on view are various types of works on paper: lithographs, silkscreens and etchings, as well as drawings, watercolors, and photographs. Two of the photographic works are represented in the form of light-boxes. These unique images are by artists James Casebere and Takihiro Sato, located respectively in Buildings 2 and 3. Some three-dimensional works punctuate the SVC installation too. For example, two sculptures are installed in the conference center, Building 1. There one will find a modernist styled still life of vessels and objects carved in wood by Deborah Horrell as well as Charles Parriott's cast glass sculpture entitled Tornado Man . In Building 4 there is a welded steel sculpture by Mark Bulwinkle. In Building 3 a new ceramic sculpture by Bean Finneran., and in the lobby of Building 2, an intriguing wall piece by Sherry Markovitz .

The works selected for this exhibition represent some of the best examples of emerging and mid career artists in the collection including painters Gregory Amenoff and David Bates and photographers JoAnn Verburg and Richard Misrach. Also on view are works by such contemporary American masters as Richard Diebenkorn, Ed Ruscha , and Wayne Thiebaud all of whom are represented in the collection by their remarkable prints.

As different as the materials exhibited in this exhibition are so too are the themes presented here. There are landscapes by such artists as Jane Dickson and Alfred Leslie, or more narrative and figurative works by John Buck, Roy de Forest and Fay Jones. Throughout the exhibition one will also find strikingly bold abstractions some painterly and others purely geometric, exemplified by such artists as Louise Bourgeois, Alfonse Borysewicz, Squeak Carnwath, Ellsworth Kelly , Sol LeWitt and Judy Pfaff .

An illustrated checklist of the exhibition will be available at the receptionists' desks.